Monday 14 October 2013 04.28 EDT
First published on Monday 14 October 2013 04.28 EDT

Danny Boyle and his Slumdog Millionaire collaborators, writer Simon Beaufoy and producer Christian Colson, have joined the rush to high-end TV by signing up for a 10-part miniseries about the second world war saboteurs of Germany's nuclear weapons programme.

Telemark, as the project is currently titled, will be written by Beaufoy and presumably at least some of its episodes will be directed by Boyle for the 20th Century Fox-owned FX cable channel. The series of wartime raids on the Vermork plant by British trained Norwegian resistance, which managed to prevent German exploitation of Norway's production of "heavy water", a vital component of early nuclear weapon research, was previously filmed in 1965, as the Anthony Mann-directed The Heroes of Telemark starring Kirk Douglas and Richard Harris.

Boyle said in a statement: "This is one of the world's greatest stories, and we want to tell it on an epic scale." Beaufoy added: "As we all know, some of the very best narrative fiction ever told is currently being created as episodic television. This incredible story is ideally suited to the slower burn and added complexity that the longer format allows."